Tag: Sheldon Adelson

The Big Short Part II: The DK Effect Part V

In a series of visual puns, Margot Robbie describes the collapse of the real estate bubble while sipping bubbly in a bubble bath, in this synopsis of The Big Short, nominated by Oscar for best film

The Dunning-Kruger Effect: Part 1

“This might be seen as a sign that the American right has finally crossed the border into looney-land.” Perhaps observations from the field of cognitive science, the Dunning-Kruger effect, can help explain why.

The Powell Memo: Part II

It’s been a pretty straight line from the Powell Manifesto, to Citizens United, to the rise of anonymous billionaire financed Superpacs. As the crowded GOP presidential race has shown, there are no shortage of opportunists willing to prostitute themselves for a place at the table.

O, The Boner, & FDR

TehBoner2 againPlan B Boner has a sad

The only thing preventing President Obama from once again becoming a pariah among progressives is the Teabagger python that squeezes the GOP harder every time it even contemplates the word “compromise.”

In the latest round of budget negotiations, Obama has broken his campaign promises to:

1. Exempt the first $250k of everyone’s income a slight rise in taxes, back tothe rates that prevailed during the go-go years of the Clinton Administration. Instead, he raised the threshold to $400k, reducing government revenues by $300 billion in the process.

2. Hold discretionary budget cuts to $1 trillion. Instead, he added another $300 billion in order to pay for the loss of revenues above.

3. Keep Social Security off the table. Agreeing to cut cost of living increases by adopting a “chained CPI” accounting formula. As Jane Hamsher at The Lake explains, no one should be surprised by Obama’s willingness to “adjust” SS benefits, despite what he said during the campaign, given his track record on the subject.

Add to that the additional $1.5 trillions of cuts Obama agreed to in 2011, and Obama has offered to cut the budget a whopping $2.8 trillion. You’d think that the Rethugs would have jumped at the chance to reduce the size of government by the largest amount in history. Then again, they and their billionaire sponsors are far more interested in individual tax cuts than reducing the debt, as the last 20 years of Republican administrations have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Which brings us to the latest riot in the asylum known as the House of Representatives. Unable to muster any support whatsoever for Obama’s latest capitulation negotiation, Speaker of the House John Boehner instead hatched his own plan he named “Plan B.” (Plan Boner? Plan Bourbon? Plan Bust?) The Boner Plan did finally accept an increase in income taxes, but only on the uber rich, i.e. the top .2%. Blowing past the 250k and 450k thresholds, he raised it to $1 million, starving the government of revenues even more, without even mentioning off-setting budget cuts, let alone specifying which ones. [Edit/Update: ThinkProgress has a side by side comparison here.]

Boehner was under no illusion that it would ever pass the Senate, let alone survive a veto by the president. Thus it was a strictly political maneuver, probably meant to signal that he could deliver his caucus despite the caterwauling from his wingnut right. He went before the cameras, speaking confidently that he had enough votes for passage. He could thus leave town for the holidays, the ball in the president’s court.

Unfortunately for The Orange Man, he can’t count, can’t count on his own party to back his play. (Why he thought the no-tax-at-any-cost-crowd would all fall on their swords in a futile gesture is beyond me.) At the last minute, he pulled the bill from the floor, admitting that he didn’t have the votes. Hand that man an exploding ceegar…

How Washington has become so utterly paralyzed is detailed by Robert Ornstein (American Enterprise Institute) and Thomas Mann (Brookings Institute) in their book “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism.”  They continue their analysis in a recent WAPO op-ed “Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem“:

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.
When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.

Something that’s been obvious to progressives for decades seems to be finally seeping into the sclerotic brains of The Beltway Village People. Here’s what Ornstein and Mann say about the enabling contributions of The Fourth Estate, who have fully internalized the fallacy of false equivalency:

“Both sides do it” or “There is plenty of blame to go around” are the traditional refuges for an American news media intent on proving its lack of bias, while political scientists prefer generality and neutrality when discussing partisan polarization. Many self-styled bipartisan groups, in their search for common ground, propose solutions that move both sides to the center, a strategy that is simply untenable when one side is so far out of reach.

Conservative ideology itself plays a substantial role in the dysfunctionality that has turned the US government into a chaotic three ring circus that has the rest of the civilized world shaking their heads in disbelief:MORE. . .“O, The Boner, & FDR”

Tales From The Benghazi Crypt Keeper (Update)

Crypt Keeper John McCain says: “Hello, Boils and Ghouls. Welcome to my nightmare.”

Is it just US (Urantian Sojourn), or is John McCain becoming a decrepit parody of himself?

Just as he has never gotten over being tortured by the North Vietnamese, manifest in his ‘bomb the hell out of ’em’ knee-jerk response to nearly every foreign policy crisis,  he will never get over losing to The Black Man in The White House.

Early in President Obama’s first term, McCain beat the war drums on Iran. During the Arab Spring, he demanded that our default response be to arm every opposition group in sight, despite the fact that many of them are Islamic fundamentalists with Al Qaeda sympathies.  The strategy of “leading from behind” that operated so effectively in overthrowing Libya’s Mohamar Qadaffi, costing not a single American life, makes McCain’s wrinkled and liver spotted skin crawl right off his malformed skeleton. (That skeletal malformation was the result of a crash landing he endured after being shot down over heavily populated Hanoi by the Vietnamese during one of his 23 bombing sorties.) This is a guy who really, really enjoys the smell of napalm in the morning.

Not surprising then that he would immediately jump all over the Benghazi tragedy. Instead of waiting for a thorough investigation of how and why four brave Americans lost their lives (former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen (ret.), is conducting one such investigation for the State Department), McCain accused the Administration of a political cover-up, supposedly to preserve President Obama’s national security cred in the run-up to the election. Killing Usama bin Laden had effectively neutered what had been a major GOP political advantage, national defense. Given that they had thoroughly tanked the economy under George W. Bush, they had little left to hang their hats on.

A few weeks later, Obama won the election in an electoral landslide and the popular vote by nearly four percentage points. At that point, you would have thought that all the election year cover-up hype would have died a natural death. Not so, when the ever-vengeful McCain catches the scent of blood and feces in the air.

(Perhaps his shattered dreams of being appointed Secretary of Defense in a Mitt Romney administration added fuel to his always simmering anger. How would someone with McCain’s psychological profile confront the loss of an opportunity to do more than just sing “Bomb, bomb, bomb…Iran”? Hadn’t Romney’s biggest donor, Sheldon Adelson, who contributed a record $70 million after saying he would spend whatever it took to defeat Obama, made the price of his support a war against Iran? Thus did another fevered McCain ambition turn to ashes in his hands.)

Instead of confronting Obama directly over the Benghazi snafu, McCain focused his fire on UN Ambassador Susan Rice, the hapless messenger sent out by the White House to explain the ever developing understanding of the events of 9/11/12.  (Funny how the Obama proxies subjected to the most vicious Rethug attacks have all been Black, namely Rice, Eric Holder and Van Jones). In his continuing pogrom against all things Obama, McCain was joined by two fellow Rethug senators,  his BFF,  Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Kelly Ayotte (R-Maine).  Together, The New Three Amigos reacted to every subsequent intelligence community disclosure with suspicion, if not downright hostility. (See our earlier reports here and here.)

For instance, when former CIA Director and Republican rock star, David Petraeus, confirmed the White House account of how Rice was dutifully relaying talking points provided to her by the intelligence community, they were left sputtering and reaching for a new line of attack. They soon seized upon the difference between the classified and unclassified versions of the talking points. The unclassified version given by Rice omitted mention of Al Qaeda,  and instead tenuously identified the proximate cause as “extremists” reacting to an anti-Muslim YouTube video that had spurred riots around the Muslim world, a theory later deemed untrue, despite testimony eyewitness accounts to the contrary.

The McCain reputation assassin team geared up and leaped into action, once again accusing the White House of altering the talking points for political purposes. And once again, they were shot down by the intel community who said that they had approved the unclassified version in order to protect sources and methods, and for legal reasons “to prevent compromising an ongoing criminal investigation.”

Undeterred, The Benghazi Crypt Keeper nursed his conspiratorial golem back to life from his own withered man boob, claiming that were still “fifty questions”  he wanted answered. Hoping to finally put the issue to rest, Rice traveled to The Russell Senate Building Tuesday, accompanied by the interim CIA Director, Michael J. Morell, to personally answer whatever questions the Amigos might still have.

When the interviews were over, the Amigos immediately flocked to the Klieg lights and tv cameras,where they proceeded to double down on their shoot the messenger campaign. McCain said that he would be “very hard pressed” to support her expected nomination to succeed Hilary Clinton as Secretary of State. And Dear Lindsey had the line of the day when he confessed “Bottom line, I’m more disturbed than I was before.” (Ahem, Lindsey. Your lacey Freudian slip is showing.) Former Amigo Joe Lieberman (I-CON) was also paid a visit but he took a different tack, saying that Rice “told the truth, and nothing but the truth.”

Rice and Morell continued their visits to The Hill Wednesday, stopping by to see Susan Collins (R-Maine), ranking minority chair of the; and Bob Corker (R-TN), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee. Corker picked up the baton and dutifully continued the party line criticism of Rice. Collins unexpectedly opened up a new line of attack, implying that Rice might have also been responsible for the bombings of the Kenya and Tanzania embassies in the mid 1990s when she was assistant secretary of state for African Affairs  in the Clinton administration. One is entitled to ask: If Collins really considers that such a burning issue, why didn’t she bring it up during the January 2009 floor debate that preceded Rice’s unanimous Senate approval as Ambassador to the UN? Prolly because Rice ‘s old job involved policy, not security.

“Questions, questions– vee still have questions!” An endless series of questions, most or all of which have already been answered, as Rachel Maddow pointed out on her show Wednesday evening. All of which leads us to our own question: Just what the hell is all this sturm and drang really about?MORE. . .“Tales From The Benghazi Crypt Keeper (Update)”

Romney’s Parallel Universe Machine (Update)

For the man who has everything (except the presidency) , this handy device takes less energy than an Etch-a-Sketch to alter reality

The fallout from Mitt Romney‘s lies about President Obama shipping U.S. jobs to China continued yesterday as General Motors spokesman Greg Martin told The Detroit Free Press:

“We’ve clearly entered some parallel universe during these last few days. No amount of campaign politics at its cynical worst will diminish our record of creating jobs in the U.S. and repatriating profits back to this country.”

Huffpo describes  it thus:

Mitt Romney’s round of highly dubious television and radio ads suggesting that Chrysler and GM are shipping American jobs to China has managed to offend both car companies….

The day before, meanwhile, Chrysler Group LLC CEO Sergio Marchionne penned a letter to the Detroit News insisting that there was no validity to the idea that the company was shipping Jeep production overseas. Instead, he noted, the company was looking to open new factories in China to meet increasing demand there.

Used to be that when a political campaign got caught with its pants down, it would mumble an apology or at least have the good sense to STFU.  Not this generation of Rethugs. Instead, they double down, drop their undies and moon  the world.:

The Romney campaign has showed no willingness to back off the suggestion that American Jeep workers may end up losing their jobs. In fact, the campaign has released a radio ad in Ohio to complement the one it has on television there that repeats the insinuation.

Which of course is entirely consistent with their adoption of the Big Lie strategy that Goebbels found so effective. What really makes it work though is constant repetition, made possible by Citizens United and the unlimited amounts money provided by plutocrat billionaires like the Koch Brothers and Sheldon Adelson who think so much of themselves that they’re intent in re-making the US in their own distorted image.

At the close of Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked:

“Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?”

  “A Republic, if you can keep it.”

What we are witnessing this election is no less than a battle for the very soul of the country.  We are right at that tipping point Franklin referred to.  Will we continue to be an admittedly flawed  representative government, where the democratic principle of one person, one vote prevails, and the belief that free speech is not measured in personal and corporate wealth?  Or will be become just another oligarchy run by greedy and power-hungry billionaires who have more in common with Ayn Rand than the Founders, who promised “to promote the general welfare” at home and maintain “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind” abroad.

The prospect of four more years of The Black Man in The White House is enough to send the Rethugs over the edge, despite record corporate profits and huge increases in the personal wealth of the top 1%.

The Koch Brothers spent $25 million between 2005-2008 alone, fighting every attempt to regulate climate-changing green house gases, the byproduct of their energy extraction companies.  The results are super-storms like Sandy that just killed some 74 people (and counting), traumatized millions more, and wreaked $50 billion (and counting) in property damage.

And now they’re on the cusp of getting one of their own into, arguably, the most powerful office in the world.  A say-anything politician and his Darwinian running mate that want to privatize FEMA disaster relief by further cutting the social safety net to pay for it.  How’s that for Bizarro World logic?

Somehow I think that when these traitors to the planet are called to account for their crimes they will have so deluded themselves about their assumed natural superiority and moral rightness that they will find no contrition in their hearts, and thus no need for mercy from the real Powers That Be.

 But when mercy is exhausted, when the “memory” thereof testifies to its depletion, then does justice prevail and righteousness decree. For mercy is not to be thrust upon those who despise it; mercy is not a gift to be trampled under foot by the persistent rebels of time.

—The Urantia Book

I want to be around for that.  Meanwhile, a little justice and righteousness would be a good thing right now.

[Image found here.]

UPDATE: (11/1 @ 1:25 pm) Exxon and Shell just announced they made $16 billion in profits during the last quarter alone.

And here’s a reminder of what a dick Romney is on the issue of climate change.